페이무 『小城之春』의 주변성

Abstract

‘Spring in a Small Town’was met with both words of praise and criticism as soon as it opened in September, 1948. When most of the reviews were bad it closed, just one week after it opened. The long takes, unique shooting angle and narration style of the film received good reviews from many film critics. It stood the test of time in terms of film language and technique, but when the film opened in Shanghai in 1948, it was criticized for its ‘decadent and sick’contents. However, around thirty years later, ‘Spring in a Small Town’ was evaluated as a model national film by a Chinese film company, and the director, Fei Mu, was praised as a pioneer of Chinese films. China had to make a choice in 1948. It was an important time when people had to decide what position to take, and whether they would stay in China or leave. I have chosen to write about Fei Mu because of his choice of versatility that distances himself from mainstream topics of the unique time of 1948. I decided to write about Fei Mu to look into the diverse forms of early Japanese film history through Fei Mu, who combined western film theory and traditional Chinese aesthetics to form his own type of Chinese national film. This study aimed to examine Fei Mu’s pursuit and materialization of film aesthetic through his work, ‘Spring in a Small Town,’ and examined the cultural psychology of Chinese people in 1948 through symbols in the film, such as a small town and castle wall. ‘Spring in a Small Town’ can be seen as a symbol of the agonies of Chinese intellects in Fei Mu’s time.